In spite of the uncontested success of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, the stories of each game have been the subject of criticism from fans and critics alike. Breath of the Wild didn’t explore its own story too deeply, and Tears of the Kingdom repeated itself to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything while playing. Though its characters are lovable and its story is strong, many (myself included) felt that it fell flat in both games as a result of its repetitiveness and lack of depth. I believe that it’s not the story itself but rather its delivery that has resulted in so much criticism.
Breath of the Wild was my first Zelda game, and the story was not the highlight for me. My main issue with the narrative was how detached I felt from it. The memories feature Link in scenarios that take place 100 years ago. However, I was seeing these memories from a distance, rather than experiencing these critical moments firsthand. The characters that are important to the plot are only shown through these memories, and I didn’t really get a chance to directly interact with these characters throughout the main game.
Because of this, I didn’t really feel attached to these past characters and their tragedy sometimes falls flat. Instead of feeling sad for them, it is hard not to wonder why we should care so much about these past figures. Though knowing the fates of these characters made me sad for them, I was never too hung up on it. I never wished I could change the course of their history and save their lives. I cared more about the characters I met in the present.
By giving the past champions more screentime, the Champion’s Ballad DLC did somewhat endear me to these characters, but it didn’t change my initial impression of them. Learning about characters through memories means that players feel detached from them, and the DLC didn’t fix this aspect. Their story is still told through memories, with the only difference being a lack of Link in the cutscenes. This only furthers the disconnect between me and the story.
It wasn’t that the story was weak, or that the characters weren’t compelling. The issue with it is its delivery. There is something fun about learning about a story out of order, especially when we know its ending. The problem was that I felt like I had no impact in the story I was playing through. In Breath of the Wild, the memories were hidden, and served as bonus lore. As such, plenty of players likely missed most, if not all of them, the first time they played Breath of the Wild.
Still, I understand that the open-world nature of the game makes telling a linear story difficult. With this in mind, it is somewhat clever to have the memories set in the past. I could discover it in whatever order I chose without risking spoilers. In execution though, it made I and many others feel like we had little impact on the events within the narrative, especially since not much is happening in the story in the present day.
Unfortunately, Tears of the Kingdom kept and doubled down on the memories mechanic. Alongside the returning discoverable memories, there is now an extra memory cutscene that plays after each dungeon. This serves as a recap of what happened in the past era that the game focuses on. Since the open-world nature of the game is still a factor, though, Nintendo had to ensure that we could encounter this information at any point regardless of the order in which we tackled each dungeon. As a result, the constant use of the cutscene outlining the fight against the Demon King quickly got exhausting. Though it’s different people delivering that message about Ganondorf and Rauru, the script hardly changes. In an effort to make sure we don’t get lost, Nintendo ends up boring us instead.
This time, the fact that I could discover the memories at any time did risk spoiling me, since I could end up finding out about a key character’s death before I even get a chance to meet that character. Though this didn’t happen to me, the possibility is still a flaw. Still, at least the final memory only unlocks once you get all of them, so the conclusion won’t be spoiled to any unsuspecting players. Tears of the Kingdom improves upon Breath of the Wild, though, with a far more satisfying conclusion.
I felt far more directly involved in the story as I tried to figure out what happened to Zelda in the past era, and uncover why she was being spotted in association with major disasters around the land of Hyrule. Finding memories and progressing the main quest brought me closer to that goal. However, that aforementioned repetition of the same script every dungeon proves to me that Nintendo is still trying to figure out how to tell a linear story in a game that allows non-linear progression.
In short, I believe that all of the criticisms both of the most recent Zelda games get is due the problems in Nintendo’s execution of a linear story in an open-world environment. Breath of the Wild suffered from me not having any impact on any substantial part of the story and the overemphasis on flashback memories. On the other hand, Tears of the Kingdom became repetitive as it tried to ensure that I was never out of the loop, no matter the order in which they tackled each dungeon. If their stories were delivered differently, the criticism wouldn’t be as prominent.
If Nintendo keeps the open-world approach for Zelda, I hope they address these issues with their delivery of the story. Even just having an internal check for how much we as players know so that details aren’t repeated would have done wonders for Tears of the Kingdom. I don’t think it’s impossible to deliver a linear story in a non-linear game; it’s very difficult, and there’s better ways of doing it. Only time will tell, though, if the next mainline Zelda will pull more from Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom, or from Ocarina of Time due to its imminent remake. Needless to say, though, I really hope the aforementioned problems with the narrative are not a factor for the future of the franchise, whether if its with the next game or even the upcoming movie.
